By the Mast Divided

by David Donachie

  ‘I had intended to wait until daylight, sir, so that the men could properly see what they were about.’

  ‘Mr Digby, my standing orders for this ship do not allow you the liberty of such a decision.’

  ‘Sir.’

  Barclay’s standing orders were, to Digby’s mind, too inflexible. Be that as it may, all captains issued them and he was obliged to obey them.

  ‘Note it, sir,’ Barclay added. ‘I will say nothing on this occasion, but should it occur again, I will feel obliged to put my displeasure in writing.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘Now, Mr Digby, oblige me by beating to quarters, and running out the maindeck guns.’

  Whistles blew, a drum began to beat, and a hail of shouting ensued as the crew who knew their stations rushed to the cannon that lined the sides and cast off the guns, hauling them away from the side, to poke out of the open gunports, while others tied off the mess tables to the deck beams above and moved all the loose items like benches, barrels and bread sacks to the centre of the deck where they were out of the way. Ridley, shepherding his charges back up on to the upper deck was passed by a couple of midshipmen and Lieutenant Digby, as they descended from the upper deck and took position amidships between the guns, which had been run out as if they were about to engage in battle.

  On deck Ralph Barclay, with Roscoe now at his side and four men on the wheel, stood watching a sky turning from black to pale grey, as the shoreline changed, very slowly, from nothingness to a distinct line, beginning to colour until the buildings of Ramsgate began to take shape. Behind Barclay, his drummer, young Martin, back in his red coat and tricorn hat was rat-tat-tatting away, setting up a noise that echoed from white chalk cliffs. When that noise ceased and no perceivable threat could be seen on the horizon, that Barclay could ‘see a grey goose at a quarter mile’, all aboard knew that it was now officially dawn.

  ‘Mister Collins, lay the ship on a course to put us off the Brake Channel.’

  The increasing light brought little joy to Pearce, for although he could see land with full daylight, he could also see as they came on a parallel course just how much seawater now lay between ship and shore. With nothing against which to judge the actual distance he could not be sure, but if it could hardly be less than half a mile, and disturbed enough to throw up a light spume which, carried on the wind brought the taste of salt to his lips. There were fishing smacks about, with a crowd of gulls screeching around their rigging, but they were as far off as the coast, and no more enticing.

  ‘Mr Roscoe, you may house the gun. Bosun, once that is completed you can pipe the hands to breakfast.’

  Sent below again, the Pelicans were surrounded by barked orders that saw the guns bowsed up again so that their muzzles touched the wood of the now closed ports. Heavy rope breechings tied to great ring bolts fastened to the ship’s side held them secure. Within a minute mess tables were being lowered from the deck head where they had been triced up, to nestle once more between the cannon, and benches made up of casks and planks to sit on were taken from amidships and put back in place.

  Within minutes the deck had gone from a fighting platform back to what it had been before – the place where the crew took their ease and ate their food. Small artefacts that made each mess table a trifle different – tins, carved ornaments of wood and bone – were replaced and Pearce watched the scene as if it was a play, only performed in the open instead of in a theatre. It was only when the activity tailed off that he realised that he and his mess had stood watching instead of doing the same.

  ‘Come on, you lubbers on twelve,’ Dysart called, ‘get your table unlashed and doon, then get them kids off tae the galley or you’ll no get ony breakfast.’

  ‘When we drops anchor at Deal,’ said Molly, ‘you won’t be able to see the side of the ship for bumboats. But we won’t rest long, ’cause I hear the convoy is ready to weigh and waiting for us. That’s when I will get your notes into the hands of men who will do the deed.’

  ‘For which we thank you.’

  ‘Happen, I’ll need a favour myself, lad,’ the old sailor said, ‘an’ you’ll be able to oblige.’

  ‘You only have to ask,’ Gherson replied.

  ‘Who knows, if we are delayed by a foul wind, you might get yourself ashore before we weigh.’

  ‘Then I pray for it.’

  Molly put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘You’ll not mind a bit if I don’t share that. A sailor going deep would be a fool to pray for a foul wind.’

  Pearce, watching from his own mess table, wondered once more if Gherson knew what he was getting himself into, and as he returned to the table he had a terrible temptation to ask him. Back on the table Gherson had just left, a member of Molly’s mess was joshing him. ‘He’s a pretty number, that one, mate.’

  ‘He’s nowt but a tease, friend,’ Molly replied, aiming a smile at Gherson who had turned to look back at him. ‘Who thinks by flashing me that smirk of his, and waving them long dark eyelashes, he can have me eating out of his hand.’

  ‘Then why bother with him?’

  ‘Bit of fun, just a bit of fun. But I won’t go trusting him, ’cause I smell a wrong un’ there.’

  Gherson’s letter, and Pearce’s along with it, had gone into the hands of Lemuel Hale. The coxswain would take them to the captain, who would know he owed the source a favour. For someone like Molly that was precious – a favour in the bank with someone like Ralph Barclay was to be prized.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘John Wilkes,’ exclaimed Ralph Barclay, as he looked at the superscription on Pearce’s letter. He had already read Gherson’s letter, a straightforward plea to a woman to rescue the man whose heart she had so completely won, with an aside to keep her husband in the dark regarding both their love and his situation.

  ‘John Wilkes,’ Barclay repeated, ‘is that old rogue still alive?’

  ‘Captain Barclay?’ Emily enquired, looking up from an embroidery ring on which she was sewing HMS Brilliant, for she was not sure if her husband was addressing her, or just talking out loud.

  ‘This letter, from one of my volunteers, the one who entered himself as Truculence, is addressed to John Wilkes at Grosvenor Square.’ The look of incomprehension on his wife’s face invited him to add, ‘He was a famous, or should I say infamous, radical politician. Libelled half the government when he was a Member of Parliament, and claimed privilege to save himself. Did it once too often though and found himself in gaol for his sins. Must be eighty if he is a day. Before your time, my dear – dammit, what am I saying, it’s before my time.’ Forced to give a look of apology for that lapse in language, Ralph Barclay took refuge in breaking the seal.

  ‘You intend to read it?’ Emily asked.

  ‘It is my duty, Mrs Barclay.’ Looking down to read he did not see Emily frown – in the world in which she had been raised you did not read other people’s correspondence. She watched him as he scanned the lines, his brow alternately furrowing and clearing.

  ‘Fellow has a good hand, and damn me, begging your pardon, if he don’t write in French, which I can only make out one word in ten. Would you oblige me, my dear, I know your French to be much better than mine.’

  ‘I’m not sure, husband…’

  Her husband’s response was quite sharp. ‘Mrs Barclay, I cannot believe you would hesitate to help me.’

  ‘You are sure such inquisitiveness is necessary?’

  ‘Inquisitiveness? What a strange word to employ. I have told you it is my duty. Hale has already alerted me to this fellow, and I have marked him myself. Do you not recall his insolence yesterday when coming aboard? He is the one I had to chastise for daring to stare at you.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Yes, and he could be dangerous, this could be dangerous.’ Seeing her still hesitate as he brandished the letter, he added, ‘I believe young Farmiloe has decent French.’

  Emily remembered better than her husband knew that very brief exchange of a look that had
ended up with the poor fellow being punished. Unsure of her motives, mentally reassuring herself that she might as well do as she was asked because if she did not, Farmiloe would, Emily held out her hand, took the letter and began to read, Ralph’s eyes on her and him fidgeting impatiently.

  After a full two minutes, during which he was certain his wife had perused it more than once, he demanded, ‘Well?’

  ‘It is not in any way a normal letter,’ she replied, ‘indeed, apart from the date and the name of the ship, it almost seems to be written in some kind of code.’

  ‘Read it to me.’

  ‘It addresses your Mr Wilkes and has some kind words to say regarding his reputation.’ Ralph Barclay snorted derisively at that. ‘And refers to a man and a youth that he met in the company of James Boswell in June 1790 at a certain house in Arlington Street, Piccadilly.’

  That made Ralph Barclay’s heart jump; Boswell was the biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson and quite a well-known Scot. ‘This fellow has, it seems, connections.’

  ‘Then it goes on, “Having yourself been at the mercy of an unforgiving and malevolent law, you realise more than most that flight from proscription is not the answer. You will know for certain to whom this refers when I tell you he resides in the Quartier de Saint Généviere, in the rue Saint Etienne de Gres, Paris, an address from which he has written to you on several occasions.”’

  ‘I do believe that Wilkes fled to Paris to avoid arrest,’ Barclay mused, ‘but Lord in Heaven I was scarcely breeched when that happened.’

  ‘This place of seeming refuge has become too dangerous for one who in some sickness needs friends to see his proscription lifted in the land of his birth. I, the younger of the two you met with Mr Boswell, came to effect that, but now I find myself in the same condition as Doctor Johnson’s black servant, and in need of the same office that you performed for him.’ Emily looked up and added. ‘As you know, there is no signature.’

  ‘Wilkes,’ Ralph Barclay said, shaking his head.

  ‘I am forced, husband, since you say this all happened so long ago, to ask how you know so much of this historical creature.’

  ‘My father, your Great Uncle once removed, tried to arrest him on a magistrate’s warrant, and was had up for trespass because of Wilkes’ parliamentary immunity. He has, therefore, been a person of some consequence in my life, but not one with any happy associations.’

  ‘Doctor Johnson’s black servant?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Means nothing,’ Barclay lied, taking back the letter, for he knew very well that the man in question had been taken up by a press-gang and thanks to the intervention of John Wilkes had been released on the instructions of the Admiralty, a service that this Pearce fellow clearly sought for himself from a man who, old and infirm as he was, still had some influence. At the same time he was mulling on the surname Pearce, for there was a nagging thought at the back his mind, one that he could not pin down, that it meant something.

  Emily wanted to beard her husband and nail his lie, to ask why a man like the writer of the letter in her hand would volunteer for service at sea. He was clearly educated, and he could write, in excellent if idiomatic French, which implied that he also spoke the language with some fluency.

  Ralph Barclay was thinking once more of the dangers inherent in pressing men like this – those who could write and had contacts with people who could plead at the highest level on their behalf. But this man had not pleaded those connections to him, which would have seen him immediately released, and, in addressing his complaint, he had not made it directly to the Admiralty but to an intermediary he hoped would act for him.

  ‘This fellow,’ Ralph Barclay said, ‘has something to hide.’

  ‘I think the nature of his letter implies that certainly,’ Emily replied, without adding the obvious concomitant that the man her husband called Truculence, and she knew, thanks to her eavesdropping, to be named Pearce, also very obviously wanted to be free from this ship.

  ‘Then far be it from me to challenge his wish. The Navy between decks has been home to many a scoundrel before. One more will make little odds. Let him hide on my maindeck. If he does not wish to do so, let him speak up.’

  Ralph Barclay folded Pearce’s letter and placed both it, and Cornelius Gherson’s, in his desk drawer. But at the back of his mind he lacked the certainty he was determined to display for the benefit of his wife. HMS Brilliant would, within an few hours, anchor off Deal, hours in which he would think on this, and the option of putting the fellow, who might well be trouble, ashore.

  Cleaning the decks followed breakfast; wetted from head-pumps rigged over the side, they were then coated with a thin dash of sand. The Pelicans were in the line that worked on that, trousers rolled above their knees to stop them getting wet, using great blocks of stone called holystones, which they rubbed over the planking to remove the stains and indentations that had been left by the previous day’s loading. Behind them came the sweepers, the men who removed both sand and sawdust, leaving the swabbers, to mop the now scarified deck. Lastly came a team with long cloths, they flogging the deck in a futile attempt, in such a cold and damp climate, to get it dry. At least, with all the activity going on around them, it was possible to talk as they worked.

  ‘Take it easy, old fellow,’ said Pearce, who had got himself on one side of Abel Scrivens, while Michael O’Hagan had taken the other.

  ‘Less of the old,’ Abel replied, panting through the smile, even though he could scarce be said to be toiling hard. ‘Were we on land I might show you a clean pair of heels.’

  ‘The only clean heels I ever saw,’ said Michael, his small holystone, called a bible because of its size and shape, rasping on the sand, ‘were resting on a poor man’s neck.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ Abel sighed. He raised his back to straighten it, a hand going to his spine, obviously in some discomfort from his position, until a voice from behind ordered him to get labouring and a toe was jabbed into his backside.

  On the far side of O’Hagan, Charlie Taverner was guying young Rufus, heavy breathing punctuating his words. ‘Bet you’re glad you ran from…that bond of yours, Rufus…Just think, a few years of this… and you’ll be a full-qualified drudge…I can just see the sign above your tradesman door…raw mitts holding a ragged mop.’

  ‘Bugger off, Charlie,’ Rufus replied testily, and with a similar shortage of breath.

  ‘Well, tan my hide…not that you would be able.’

  ‘Half of London…was up for that job, Charlie…if only you’d stood still…long enough.’

  ‘It’s a mistake…to stand still…Rufus… Dogs piss on your leg.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Michael O’Hagan, hardly puffing, ‘are we not being pissed on now.’

  ‘We are that, O’Hagan.’

  ‘Oh for a pitcher of the Pelican’s best ale.’

  ‘Talk about piss,’ Charlie wheezed. ‘Must be handy…selling beer… and having a tavern…right by the Thames.’

  ‘Handy for more’n thinning ale, and this we’re doing is the proof enough.’

  ‘What in God’s name…brought you into the Liberties…every night, O’Hagan?’ asked Charlie Taverner. ‘You never had…a writ out on you… did you?’

  ‘If it were not you I was talking to I would be tempted to say I came for the company.’

  Charlie scowled for a brief second, until he realised that O’Hagan was ribbing him. ‘Well…few in the Pelican sought yours…I can tell you.’

  Michael grinned. ‘Rosie was quite partial, I seem to recall.’

  ‘She had rotten taste…I recall!’

  The snappy way Charlie Taverner said that told Pearce a great deal: that his dislike of Michael was not merely to do with drunken brutality, it had just as much to do with jealousy. He recalled the blowsy serving maid with her broad hips and huge bosom, and could not help but smile as he conjured up a picture of Michael and her in a sweaty embrace.

  ‘But then, of course,’ Charlie added, in a sour voice, ‘you ha
d the means…to pay for your pleasure.’

  Michael elbowed Taverner. ‘Which comes from having led such a virtuous life. There’s a lot to be said for being an honest fool instead of a thieving one.’

  ‘All hands to wear ship.’

  That loud call cut off any chance of a response from Charlie, and they were hustled back on to the ropes as HMS Brilliant changed course, and the wind that had come at them from near dead astern now came in over the starboard quarter, making the frigate heel slightly so that the deck was now canted. They were also in a swell that gently dropped then lifted the bows, so that many a face was turning green with the motion.

  ‘Mr Sykes,’ said Lieutenant Roscoe, ‘I think it is time we saw which of our new fellows can get aloft.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ the Bosun replied.

  ‘These are called the shrouds,’ said Sykes, pointing to the wide squares of rope that ran from the side of the ship, narrowing to a point a third of the way up the mast where a constricted hole led to a platform, which the bosun termed the cap. ‘And just so you know, we are sailing easy with just topsails set, and the wind coming in nicely over our starboard quarter, with hardly a heel on the barky, so we ain’t got nothing to worry about.’

  Sykes, rolling easily, indicated both sails and wind direction, knowing that these men would be unfamiliar with the sea. The pity was, he thought, looking at some of the vacant faces, they would still be that way even if they circumnavigated the globe. Every head of those taken from the Pelican was craned upwards, looking at the yards, none showing any degree of happy anticipation, for having watched the topmen at their labours all knew what was about to be asked of them. One or two, either through indifference or stupidity, were more interested in the sword fighting lessons taking place of the forecastle, which under the direction of old and deaf Mr Thrale involved most of the seamen on the ship as well as the midshipmen.

  ‘They are like a ladder,’ Sykes added, ‘pay attention there – and as safe as that if you clap on proper. And just so you know that what I say be true, I have fetched a couple of my mates to show you.’